Immigration Advocate: Sick Children Not Receiving Medicine At Detention Center

MCALLEN, TX - JULY 15: Immigrants who have been caught crossing the border illegally are housed inside the McAllen Border Patrol Station in McAllen, Texas where they are processed on July 15, 2014 in McAllen, Texas. The detainees are both men and women, and range in age from infants to adults, where more than 350 were being held. Detainees are mostly separated by gender and age, except for infants. More than 57,000 unaccompanied children have been apprehended at the southwestern border since October, more than twice the total this time last year, many through the Rio Grande Valley. Many are fleeing growing violence in Central America. (Pool photo by Rick Loomis-Pool/Getty Images)

Immigrants who have been caught crossing the border illegally are housed inside the McAllen Border Patrol Station in McAllen, Texas where they are processed on July 15, 2014. (credit: Rick Loomis-Pool/Getty Images)

ARTESIA, N.M. (AP) — Immigration advocates who were allowed to visit a New Mexico detention center say women there are complaining that children aren’t getting proper medical care and people are being deported before they can see a lawyer.

Officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have not responded to emails and phone calls seeking comment on the allegations, which echo complaints advocates have been voicing for weeks about the treatment of people accused of crossing into the country illegally to escape drug gangs and poverty in Central America

Tannia Esparza, executive director of Young Women United, says the women she visited in Artesia Tuesday told her children with coughs and diarrhea aren’t receiving medicine. She also says women told her pregnant detainees were targeted for swift deportation.

Esparza visited the Artesia complex Tuesday with representatives of other groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Mexico Immigration Law Center.